Sienna Miller Settles Phone Hacking Suit

By Sam Schulz •Published May 14, 2011•Updated on May 14, 2011 at 3:04 pm

AP

Actress Sienna Miller is pocketing £100,000 from News Corp. to settle her claims that its News of the World celebrity tabloid illegally hacked her voicemail for scoops.

Miller, known as well for her messy break-up with actor Jude Law as for her starring roles in Alfie and The Edge of Love, sued the publisher after it published 11 stories in 2005 and 2006 based on phone messages it had hired private eyes to access.

According to the Telegraph, Miller had been holding out for the company to explain just how far it had breached her privacy and to apologize in open court, both of which it has now agreed to do.

U.S. & World

“Her primary concern is not how much money is awarded by way of compensation but to know exactly what the extent was of the hacking,” her lawyer Hugh Tomlinson, the BBC reported.

Under the terms of the settlement, the defendant will also share relevant information from emails and reporters’ notes, Bloomberg reported, and will cover her legal costs.

Just last month, the Rupert Murdoch-headed media giant finally admitted that it had illegally hacked Miller’s phone, paving the way for the deal.

Miller was among a slew of prominent Brits who sued after the phone-hacking scandal first broke—among them her stepmother, Law, a member of Parliament and a handful of sports figures.

Many of their cases are still pending. Celebrity publicist Max Clifford, who settled his claims out of court years ago, suggested that Miller’s deal could help the remaining plaintiffs to settle, too, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

News Corp. said for its part that it was glad to have resolved Miller’s claims and hoped to put the other suits to bed soon, too.

The British tabloid first came under scrutiny in 2006 with the arrest of the newspaper’s editor and a private eye he’d allegedly hired to intercept royal aides’ voicemail. In the years following, investigations by the British press and law enforcement found the hacking even more widespread.